


Forgiving Slade

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 5x23 spoilers, Episode Related, Episode: s05e23 Lian Yu, Everybody Lives, Forgiveness, Gen, Healing, I had Slade and Ollie feels, Joe Wilson mention, Kid Fic, Lian Yu, Season 6 Speculation, Season/Series 05, Slade Wilson Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 18:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10996761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Five things about having Slade Wilson back in his life that annoyed Oliver, and the one that really, really didn’t.





	Forgiving Slade

1 Swords

Malcolm Merlyn had probably thought he was being clever when he told Oliver he’d spent years training to bring a bow and arrow to a sword fight, but there was a ring of bitter irony to his words that at the time, only Oliver was alive and sane enough to appreciate the sting of. 

Slade had always loved swords, and while Oliver had seen the man handle everything from an RPG to a toothpick with an easy finesse that spoke of instinct and talent as much as it did experience and ingenuity, Oliver had never quite stopped feeling strangely disloyal for his own inability to ever quite master Slade's weapon of choice. 

Being good enough to beat the Demon's Head in single combat might have constituted mastery to anyone but Slade, but to Oliver, who had watched the man wield his katanas as nothing so much but extensions of his own arms, who had trusted that skill while crouched desperately over an apparently live landmine, good enough would never quite do. 

Slade had been back in Starling about a week when Oliver showed him the lair for the first time, shutting his ears to the somewhat subdued protests of his team. The wonders of modern medicine had healed Slade’s back of infection, but the scars he earned shielding as many of Oliver's team as he could from the fires that finally made ash of the purgatory they had both lived through more than once would never truly fade. He would forever be marked with the evidence of his true character, free of the twisted bitterness of the Mirakuru. Oliver was almost sickeningly alright with that, somehow. 

Still, Slade is still just barely healed enough that Oliver hesitates when the man tosses a training staff at him, moments after the briefest of glances at the rest of the not unimpressive setup. Oliver is huffing slightly in annoyance even before his fingers are knocked painfully into the closest console, the wooden training tool bouncing loudly on the floor. 

Slade arched an eyebrow towards the strap of his eyepatch. “Going soft on me are you kid?” Oliver was years off swinging in anger at a simple jibe, but it made little difference in the end. 

He lost spectacularly. Five times in succession. 

After his fifth face plant, a hand appeared in his line of sight. Slade was on the other end, his expression somewhere between amused and fond. Oliver forsaw a lot of bruises in his future. 

As Slade returned the makeshift swords to their rack, apparently not even having broken a sweat, and Oliver limped over to the nearest chair to collapse in well earned exhaustion, John’s awed expression swept over Slade. “Man, you have got to teach me how to do that.”

Slade had looked more surprised than Oliver had ever seen him. 

The wincing was at least useful for covering Oliver's responding smirk. 

Oliver had always wanted to introduce his team to Slade Wilson. He'll forever be grateful to Lian Yu for giving him the chance to do just that.

2 Kid

It starts as a bet. Quentin dares Rene and Zoe that they can’t count the number of times Slade calls Oliver kid over the course of a day on their fingers alone. 

Lance came back from the island without a scratch, and since Zoe and William have become a permanent part of all their lives, the man smiles more than Oliver can ever remember seeing. Needless to say, if a bet can be the cause of one of those smiles, Oliver isn't in any position to begrudge them all their fun. Even if the pair of darees choose the middle of a very busy day to crash into the Mayor's private office and perch on random parts of the furniture.

Oliver, who is calmly doing mayorly things in his office and studiously not listening to Slade’s recitation over speakerphone of the ridiculousness of chip cards, and "I still haven’t forgiven you for everything I missed while I was stuck in that cell kid," pays his giggling companions little notice. 

He hangs up on Slade abruptly when Zoe triumphantly holds up two splayed open hands with a shrieked, “Ten!” Oliver suspects the concept of bets alludes her. 

Slade phones back with a gruff “Don’t hang up on me kid.” He meets Oliver’s groaned "Slaaadee" with an inquiring “What is it kid?” Oliver drops his head to the desk with a thud and gives up, Slade's concerned "Kid, are you alright? Kid?! Kid???" echoing around the office like a demented alarm system. 

By the time Curtis presents him with a spreadsheet organized by tone of voice and type of statement, Oliver is beginning to suspect he works with a group of children. And no, he’s not including the apparently ever multiplying list of actual children joining their little family in that number. 

Oliver finds his Team’s new habit more than a little annoying, to say the least, but they make it to William’s twelfth birthday party with kid and kiddo firmly intact, whereupon Samantha turns to Oliver following Slade’s gruff “Vanilla is my favourite too kiddo” and intones with perfect seriousness, “I was a little unsure at first I’ll admit Oliver, but I really like your brother.”

Most of the cake has been eaten before it occurs to Oliver that it never even crossed his mind to correct her. 

 

3 Efficiency

The guards were arranged in neat patterns, star shapes of five held together with rope and duct tape. Slade was sitting quietly against a nearby crate in the center of it all, holding the package in one hand and a katana in the other, smirk firmly in place. 

“Nice of you to finally join the party kid.” Oliver had recently watched Slade defeat the entire team wearing a blindfold and with his dominant arm literally tied behind his back. None of them had been left with a single bruise to show for their rather spectacular ass kicking. 

A goon attempted to roll out of formation, freezing when Slade shifted slightly in his vague direction. Oliver sighed. He sometimes wondered why the criminal underworld of Starling even bothered anymore. 

Thea ran in, Dig and Wild Dog on her heels. The latter two promptly gaped, while his sister proved to be made of sassier stuff. “Would it kill you to leave a few of the bad guys for us Slade?”

The chuckle was a little disbelieving. Malcolm’s apparent death had jarred Thea enough that attempting to kill Slade had been a weekly occurrence upon their return, rather than the monthly one Oliver had initially predicted. And while Oliver privately refused to let himself mourn and feel relief in equal odd measures for Tommy's father until an actual body turned up, however charred, he suspected that Slade’s irreverent good humour at Thea’s attempts had far from helped the situation. 

Malcolm's death had reopened some wounds of his own, revolving largely around the conflicting remembrances of a boyhood filled with idolizing his best friend's attentive and loving father while simultaneously resenting the neglectful forgetfulness of his own, an adolescence of watching Tommy lose that father bit by bit while Robert Queen resisted his own son's every attempt to just get some form of reaction from him, any form of reaction, and an adulthood begun on an island where a dark haired man with dripping sarcasm and faster blows practically forced him to grow up to be a better man than he'd ever bargained on becoming. 

In a way, Oliver had lost all three of those men. And as hard as it is to watch his sister's unhappiness at confronting their mother's murderer at every turn, a larger, selfish part of him is just so damn happy to have the man back. But he doesn't stop in. Slade could look after himself just as much as Thea could.

And maybe, somehow, the man could even help his little sister one day, just as he'd helped Oliver all those years before.

Sure enough, three weeks in Slade had caught the latest arrow before it grazed his cheek yet again, looked Speedy dead in the eye, and apologized for killing her mother. 

Thea had promptly spat “Go to hell!” in his face, complete with spittle projectile. 

Slade hadn’t blinked, hadn’t said the air mouthed “been there” Oliver found himself unable to prevent his own lips from forming, had simply squared his not unimpressive jaw, stared directly into the eyes of a girl he helped orphan, and somehow, impossibly, said the right thing. "I know you hate me Miss Queen, with very good reason. And I assure you that no matter the depth of your feelings towards me, they will still never be comparable to the level of hatred I feel towards myself for my deplorable actions towards you and your family. But despite that, your big brother is my family as well, and I’ve spent enough of both our lives walking away from that. From him.” Oliver felt his eyes prickle sharply. 

He could hear Thea’s swallow from across the room. “So I’m very, very sorry Miss Queen, but I won’t be going anywhere. Not even back to hell. Not even for you. Because he needs me.” The "And I need him" echoed in Oliver's head as if it had been shouted instead of merely implied. Slade somehow managed to make the entire thing sound both implacable and gently apologetic. 

Thea had swallowed again, blinked twice rapidly, and then promptly thrown her bow after that earlier arrow. 

Slade caught it deftly as she followed it up with words. “Well then, you’d best start making yourself useful, hadn’t you.” 

It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. 

Three months later, and Slade was proving to be a remarkable asset to the Team. In fact, he rather seemed to render the rest of them somewhat redundant. 

Quentin had the reduced crime rate statistics to back that feeling up. 

Slade’s smirk caught Oliver by surprise with its suddenness, the package being tossed carelessly in his direction. Wild Dog actually squeaked. 

Thea squawked. Oliver verbalized for them all. “Are you crazy, that thing could go off at any time!” Slade’s smirk turned sardonic. “You do remember I was in bomb disposal right kid?”

Oliver had not actually.

Felicity’s voice squawked over the comms. “Oh come on! Is there anything this guy can’t do?”

Oliver felt his mouth open, but for a moment, no sound came out. Then a thought occurred to him, and he felt his own eyes light up. 

Slade’s gaze turned wary in response. Oliver let forth a smirk of his own. 

“Yes actually. He’s a terrible cook.” A beat of silence. Slade’s mouth slid open slightly, acerbic remark no doubt at the ready. 

The sound bubbled out of Thea almost of its own accord it seemed. At first Oliver thought she had trod on something. Then she did it again, and Oliver recognized it for what it was. 

His sister was laughing. After a beat, Dig and Rene joined in. By the time Slade’s ear painful chuckles joined the fray, the entire Team was practically rolling on the ground with laughter. 

The hogtied guards looked at them as if they were all nuts.  
Oliver suspected they weren’t wrong. 

He watched Thea leaning on Slade’s shoulder slightly for support as giggles cascaded through her petite frame. 

Personally, Oliver has always suspected sanity is overrated. 

4 Personal Safety

Oliver was halfway back to the lair when the sound of another motorbike reached his pounding ears. He slowed carefully, his hands sticky on the brakes. He knew the sound of that engine whine. 

Slade skidded to a halt beside him, practically rolling off his bike in his haste to reach Oliver’s side. The grip on his shoulders was intentionally painful. 

“What the hell were you playing at back there kid, going in blind, without backup, without any of us. Do you have a death wish, you reckless idiot?!” Slade’s voice had dropped from rasp to broken whisper. Oliver blinked rapidly, moisture pooling involuntarily at the edges of his eyes. 

“I could handle it fine. There was no need for anyone else to be put at risk.” It sounded feeble even to his own ears. 

Slade tightened his grip, following it up with a careful shake for good measure. “This isn’t the island kid, you don’t have to do this alone.” 

Oliver’s jaw worked. “I. Was. Fine.” 

Slade snorted, his grip going from punishing to firm. “Yeah, sure kid, and I’m mother goose.”

He held up one blood stained glove as evidence to punctuate that point. Oliver kept glaring. 

“I don’t need your help!” _I don't need you._ He screamed it into the night. Distantly, a disturbed member of the urban wildlife population rustled a used plastic bag. 

Slade’s face softened, and for a moment, Oliver was a boy again, gazing at Slade’s two brown eyes through scraggly bangs, waiting for the man to rally and fix everything. 

He was not disappointed. The gloved hands transferred from his arms to wrap firmly about his back, caress the back of his head, nudge his chin into Slade's shoulder

It had been nearly a decade since Slade had hugged him, but it felt as safe and firm and right as it ever had. 

“I know you don’t kid. I know you haven't needed me for a long time now. But I’m here anyway, so you might as well get used to it.” _I'm here now kid._ It should have sounded like a threat, growled into his ear as it was, but to Oliver, nothing had ever sounded more reassuring. 

5 Joe

Trying to track down Slade’s son was annoying. There really was no other way to put it. It was annoying. 

Not because Oliver begrudged Slade the time and resources. And not even because he and Curtis occasionally had to tag team the man to get the slightest amount of cooperation from him, because the mere mention of the subject frequently provided a Slade free work environment for days on end. 

Oliver had categorically forbidden Felicity from using this to her advantage against the man’s silent, and yes, admittedly slightly creepily lurky, presence, and felt guilty as hell about it until he’d taken in her quiet pout of response. 

No, it was annoying because six months on, it was proving a rather fruitless search. 

Nearing his sixteenth birthday according to the intel Oliver had gathered, his and Slade’s post-Lian Yu, the redux edition (as Felicity was calling it) attempts to find the boy had led to reports of a runaway and a cold paperwork trail. 

Slade spent most of his free time scouring every inch of the country looking for the boy, and Oliver still joined him whenever he could. Lance circulated his details to every law enforcement agency he could think of. Felicity started a blog. Curtis began a FB page and Rene let Slade play with Zoe whenever he liked. 

But every month of silence made the sting of a promise broken weigh heavier on Oliver’s shoulders, and thus, annoyance was the deepest emotion he would allow himself to feel on the subject, the brand on his skin a heavy reminder than their lives were too complicated to not give one a headache at the smoothest of times. 

Oliver was heading out for the day, Friday nights promising pizza and William, when he noticed Thea still busily typing away on her laptop. Pausing to lean on the door frame, he cleared his throat quietly. 

“Hey Speedy.” His sister didn’t so much as pause in her typing. Oliver tried again. “You want to come over tonight? William’s missed you.” He was not above playing the cute nephew card.

It earned him a distracted “Hey Ollie, not tonight okay.” Oliver blinked for a moment. 

That usually worked. 

Casually padding around the desk, he was skewered by a pair of haunted brown eyes so achingly familiar, he sometimes dreamt about them. 

Oliver had seen the picture before of course, palmed carefully into Slade’s hand when he thought no one was looking. It made it no less heartbreaking to look at now. 

Oliver let his eyes move beyond the angry teen gazing out at him, all too skinny cheekbones and hollowed eyes, to the red letters splashed across the image. 

Huh, none of them had thought to try anything as simple as missing fliers yet. 

Thea spared him a distracted half glance. Oliver leaned down to drop a kiss on his sister’s bobbing head, his throat suspiciously clogged. 

“Good job Speedy.” Thea went on with her typing, Oliver got on with going home, and they both pretended their eyes weren’t wet.

He arrived home to Slade considering takeout menus, William happily inserting a DVD into the player. Doctor Strange again. 

Oliver plucked a menu at random from the carefully formatted pile, ignoring Slade’s muttered “Come’n kid,” and commandeered the remote from William’s grasp. 

“New rule. Friday’s is officially pizza and monopoly night.” William and Slade blinked at each other over the divide of the coffee table, before swinging their heads back in Oliver’s direction. 

The "Okay kid" clashed nearly perfectly with the "Alright dad." 

Oliver pulled out his cellphone to order as William attempted to wrestle the pot of gold from Slade’s clenched hand. 

Oliver was not a religious man, but he prayed every day that wherever Joe Wilson was, he would be alright. That he would hold on until they could find him. That they would find him, alive and well. Or at least alive. That they would find him at all. 

For tonight, he listens to the ringing of the pizza parlour’s phone, squeezes his eyes shut, and silently thanks the gods that Samantha proved to be a far better mother than Adeline Wilson ever was. 

 

And 1: Forgiveness

“Dad, dad, dad! Look at what Mr. Wilson got me!” Oliver caught William’s not-quite-so-small frame before he landed in the geraniums in a bout of youthful exuberance combined with rapidly growing adolescent clumsiness. 

Slade’s chuckle was like listening to gravel being dragged over slate. Oliver found his muscles relaxing almost of their own accord. 

It had taken the team four days to dig themselves free of the remains of the underground prison that had saved all their lives, by some miracle. And Slade's really good timing. They had stumbled onto the beach to find Oliver and William huddled around a fire, numb and nearly frozen in a wasteland of ash and dirt. 

William had refused to completely let go of Oliver for a single moment, even when he sobbed into his mother’s front while Samantha cried into his hair upon their initial reunion. 

Hypothermia combined with the addition of nearly eighty pounds of prepubescent made clambering into the slightly charred but apparently unsinkable Argus supply ship serving as a glorified escape raft they had all trooped across the island to find rather interesting. 

Which is to say Slade solved the difficulty by scooping up both Oliver and his limpet-like cargo, apparently indifferent to the third degree burns he’d gotten across most of his back and shoulders shoving Thea down the crumbling security shaft they took refuge in. 

And while a part of Oliver hated himself for it, the sight of blood and puss working its way slowly down Slade’s back as Dig attempted to clean him up enough to be able to pilot the tub they were on to safety went a long way to solidifying the hope that had slithered its way into his heart from the moment Slade turned his head, the “Hey Kid” echoing around the Argus prison cell like so many ghosts. 

The hope that somehow, this was all real. The hope that somehow, Slade was himself again.

The hope that maybe, somehow, one day, he would get his big brother back again.

“Daaad! Look!” Oliver forced his focus back onto the boy in front of him. Moira Queen’s eyes blinked up at him, what appeared to be a DVD case hugged to an excitedly heaving chest. 

William’s refusal to leave Oliver’s side, which four days to the mainland and another week in two different hospitals had only lessened to a refusal to let Oliver out of his sight, had gone some way to thawing Samantha’s resolve that her son was better off with one parent, instead of two. 

It was a tentative bridge, but one Oliver was more than ready to stumble across. 

Quentin had promptly nearly burnt that bridge upon their return to civilization, his insistence that Oliver get his lawyer to make his rights legal, to go after joint custody rather than merely visitation, almost making Oliver want to slug him. 

Lance had fixed his eyes firmly on Oliver the first night they were back in Starling, William securely tucked up in a room across from Samantha’s at the loft. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Rene. That kid deserves to have a father who cares about him in his life. This isn’t about you Oliver, although for damn sure your mother had no more right to keep this from you all these years than Sam in there did. This is about your son. So man the hell up and stop being so damn selfish.” Quentin's eyes softened before the last. Before he said what they both knew Laurel would have said about the whole thing, if she hadn't died before she could. "Your boy needs you Ollie."

Oliver still considered punching him. He ended up hugging him instead. 

The end result had been mutually acceptable, somehow, and for the first time since he learned he had a son, Oliver began to feel like he was truly a father. 

Hero worship and traumatic bonding aside, actually talking to his newly acquired eleven year old ironically proved to be the hardest part of the entire endeavour. 

Oliver was awkwardly suggesting they play cards on his son’s first official weekend at the loft when the door banged open and Slade, eye-patch clashing oddly with a sweater and sandal combo, had strode in as if he owned the place. 

He dropped down onto the couch beside William’s slightly hunched form, grabbed the remote Oliver didn’t know he owned from the end table, and threw a bag at Oliver’s head. 

Catching the bag of strange yellow kernels was ridiculously easy, and Slade’s imperious “Make yourself useful there kid and pop those for us” at least answered the question of whether this was a friendly visit or a business visit. 

Still, Oliver was more confused than anything when he found himself before the stove, Slade’s gruff “So what do you fancy watching there kiddo?” causing an inexplicable lump to form in his throat. 

William’s reply was almost inaudible, too quiet for Oliver to make out any of the words, but it was the first words his son had spoken since the island and suddenly, popcorn sounded like a wonderful idea. 

Tony Stark was halfway through bashing iron in a cave before Oliver dried his face enough to return to the living room, perching quietly beside his son, Slade a watchful presence on the boy’s other side, good eye watching the windows more than the screen. 

Jarvis was saving him from an ice induced death when Oliver felt a warm weight drop against his shoulder, William’s quiet breathing oddly loud over the sounds of fake movie explosions. 

The evening ended with Slade knocking a corner off the drywall in his haste to prevent the neglected corn kernels from making shrapnel out of the kitchen window glass, but William went to sleep in his father’s arms with a grin on his face, and Oliver had to try very hard not to hug Slade on the spot, flaming pot of burnt corn, Aussie cursing, hidden knives and all. 

The DVD case was shiny, a wash of blue and red and gold, crammed with names and figures. Oliver felt his lips twitch. “Infinity War huh? Very cool.” He was going for serious, and William’s excited face formed an endearing smile in response. 

“It’s beyond cool daad. It has Bucky Barnes in it!” William’s tone implies that adults are rather clueless at times. Oliver still hasn’t gotten over being called dad enough to care about the sarcasm. 

Still, between Slade and him and Samantha, William stands little chance of forming the rebellious response to parental neglect that seems to plague the Queen family.  
Slade chooses that moment to slide up beside father and son, a hand coming to rest on each shoulder. His lips twitch sardonically. “Bucky Barnes huh kiddo.” William’s face splits into dimples that are all his own. 

“Yeah, he’s the coolest!” Oliver decides to worry about his son’s vocabulary later. 

Oliver had asked Yao Fei about forgiveness once, huddled in a cave, salty tears the only proper warmth he’d felt in weeks, his father’s blood and brains still a bitter aftertaste in his mouth that never quite washed away. 

The man had pushed up his green hood, gazing at Oliver with unblinking eyes. 

“A man must first forgive himself, before others can forgive him.” 

Twenty-two going on a hundred, Oliver had had no response to that, and the subject had been dropped. The old man died long before they could pick it back up. 

A decade on, Oliver had forgiven the unforgivable many times, in Moira, in Robert, in Malcolm, Thea, Felicity, so many others. But never in himself. 

Something broke in Oliver on that island. Something that no time would ever truly heal. 

But something also began to heal there, inside the heart of the naïve boy he’d been, lost in so many ways, far beyond geographically. And it began with a man who watched him dislocate a shoulder out of pure stubbornness, and responded by laughing in his face and then promptly introducing himself in the same breadth. 

Oliver blinks at the stray dirt left on the walk from the petunias. Slade had planted them last week. Oliver supposes someday they’ll have to discuss the man officially moving in, but it seems too redundant to be remotely important right now. 

He looks down at his son. Moira Queen’s eyes blink back. 

Oliver knows Slade will never forgive himself for the things he’s done to Oliver, the things he’s taken away from him. The ways he’s hurt him. 

Oliver knows he’ll never forget the things Slade has given him, anymore than he’ll forget how easy it was to forgive his big brother for everything else. How much easier it was than forgiving himself. 

Maybe sometimes, even Yao Fei can be wrong. 

Oliver smiles at William’s eager face, his hand reaching up to grasp the proffered case. 

“Bucky Barnes huh? Alright then.” He feels himself begin to grin.

“What do you think kiddo, shall we see if Slade has more success with the popcorn than your poor old dad here?” Slade’s chuckle is more gravel on glass than slate this time. William’s “Yay!” does little to drown it out. 

Oliver thinks it’s one of the most hopeful sounds he’s ever heard. 

\--

_The Island where they found me was called Lian Yu. It’s Mandarin for purgatory._

_I suffered there. I killed there. I became a man there._

_I also found my family there._

_It began with a man called Slade Wilson. He killed my mother. One day, he may just forgive himself for that._

_You may know him as Deathstroke._

_These days, I just know him as my big brother._

_Or as my son would say, my Bucky._


End file.
